Eleanor wrote with a question that could test even the mightiest personal finance expert. “What,” she asks, “can you do when you want to save money and your roommates don't care?”

I share a house with four roommates. This saves me at least $200 a month from what I would be paying if I lived in an apartment. But roommates raise expenses in other, unexpected ways. I have been trying to cut down on monthly bills and am finding it incredibly difficult.

For example, I live with roommates that want digital cable and high-speed internet bundle. I can live without the cable (I don't watch TV) and don't mind having a lower-speed connection. But because three of my five roommates want the more expensive package, that's what we get, and instead of splitting a $60/month bill five ways we're splitting a $100/month bill. I end up paying more money overall. While I can simply not watch cable and argue with them that I won't pay for that fractional cost of the bill, there's no way I can somehow use a lower speed internet connection without some serious technological finagling.

Another way I find it difficult to cut down on monthly bills is electricity usage. I try to turn off lights, appliances, the air conditioner, and my computer when I'm not using them. My roommates would prefer to leave their computers and air conditioner on and are not as vigilant as turning off lights. The electricity bill is higher, but it still gets split five ways. Again, I have no idea how I would go about dividing the bill by individual electricity usage — how would you even start to go about measuring such a thing, when no one remembers who left the kitchen light on?

But perhaps I'm being too nitpicky — as annoying as these extra expenses are, I doubt they make it worth moving to an apartment.

It's been a l-o-n-g time since I lived with roommates — wife and cats notwithstanding — and I've forgotten some of the stuff that occurs. I certainly remember the passive-aggressive games we used to play out of spite, but I think that, in general, I never had a living situation in which splitting money was an issue.

AskMetafilter often has roommate-related questions. Many of them involve money problems, but none that I could find involve this sort of problem. Though it doesn't address Eleanor's specific concerns, UK-based iOWEYOU looks like a great little web tool for tracking roommate accounts:

iOWEYOU is an expenses sharing calculator. It is ideal for people living in a shared house. To use iOWEYOU, you log all the items you buy that you share with your group. This may be bills, food shopping, light bulbs, TV license, etc., etc. iOWEYOU then tells you how much you all owe each other.

What general advice do you have for keeping money matters between roommates peaceful but fair? What specific advice do you have for Eleanor?

In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals.

Living with roommates who are not as frugal as yourself will still save you money over living alone as long as your combined common bill payment (rent, electricity, cable, phone, etc.) is lower than what you would pay on your own. Eleanore mentioned that she was saving about $200 a month on rent alone, and even in her example of the cable bill she is only paying $20/month as opposed to about $60 if she were on her own. Basically, she seems to be saving money on every expense over living alone so as far as I can tell, Eleanore just needs to lighten up on her roommates and let this go. If she doesn’t, she might wind up becoming the ‘bad’ roommate, getting kicked out of her home and forced to spend MORE money living alone. Sometimes, in our war on personal debt we can look so hard for ways to save a penny that we overlook how much saving that penny is really going to cost us.

I think the solution is to pro-rate according to use, but it’s hard to come to an agreement that will feel fair to everyone. You can estimate that you use 20 or 30 percent electricity than your roommates do, but they may have a different view. But really, if you’re using less electricity then you should be able to bargain for paying a lower share of the costs, and that might make them more energy-conscious in the bargain.

I have a similiar situation with a family member (my girlfriend’s teenage daughter) who uses more electricity than my girlfriend and myself combined: our electricity bill doubled when she moved in with us. She’s always leaving lights on and often forgets to turn off the hot-water tap at night. Once she turns 18 we’re planning to make her pay half the electric bill, and if she doesn’t pay we’ll cut off her internet and cable. That might get her attention and make her start being more energy-conscious!

I’ve been on the other side: My bad roommate #2 argued that she shouldn’t have to chip in for A/C because she wouldn’t use it if she were living on her own.

That’s all well and good, but she was getting the advantage of having it while she was there, and it was reasonable that she would help pay for it. (Issues like this are why she ended up leaving and trying to scam in a sublessor instead.)

It’s the same thing with Eleanor. She’s getting the advantage of the cable and the internet (and with five people, I would think you’d need more bandwidth).

I can kind of sympathize with wanting to cut down on electrical usage. Maybe she could buy a Kill-A-Watt or something on her own initiative and let the roommates see the difference.

That said, however, GeekMan is right. It’s not worth squeezing on the pennies if it gets her kicked out and costs her hundreds more for a one-bedroom.

From someone currently living with roommates, I think you just have to suck it up while you’re with these roommates.

There is simply no way to divide up electricity usage that is reasonable. Figure out the amount of energy used by the AC, divide the home into individual zones of control (i.e. bedrooms), add the cost of ACing a particular bedroom with the equal split cost of ACing the rest of the space? That’s only the AC which would be a nightmare. What’s next? Are we going to try to divide the solid waste bill by determining the percentage of trash produced by each person? The water bill based on who takes longer showers?

I think once you agreed to a living situation (what cable package, internet package, roommates), you have to honor the agreement as it stands.

The note above about a teenager moving into your home is different–it is your home and someone else is welcomed in. In this case, I would say do what you can, think about giving up both Internet and cable and consider a different living arrangement after your current lease ends if the matter is that important.

Regarding recording roommate bills, we live by BillMonk at http://www.billmonk.com . It is a great tool that can track everything from rent, joint dinners (allowing you to track who bought what and proportionally dividing tax and tip, etc) and so on. I’ve used it for over a year and it has completely made living with other people easier. Never forget how much you owe the other.

One note about your energy saving: our furnace guy (not employed by our gas company) told us that it would actually be more energy efficient NOT to turn off the furnace (or the A/C) while at work/not using it, because it has to work that much longer and harder to “catch up” and get the ambient temperature into the acceptable range, whereas leaving it running requires only periodic, short adjustments.

I don’t know, you can take his word for what it’s worth.

Eleanor could apply to be the “thermostat monitor”–the only one allowed to adjust the thermostat in any way and all changes have to be submitted in typewritten triplicate 72 hours in advance… Again, it would make her pretty unpopular.

Eleanor, get a grip! You are paying about a third in cable cost compared to what you would pay on your own for basic cable. Your electricity even with high usage, in one home/apartment split between 5 is way less than what you would spend for frugal usage in your own apartment.

By the way, by completely turning off the AC when you leave, you are actually using more electricity when it turns back on and has to recool the entire house. A much more energy efficient strategy is to turn the temperature up a bit before you leave rather than completely turning it off. This is a technique recommended by Florida Electric and since it’s summer year round, we should know.

Finally, calm down and maybe setup a roommate meeting to “discuss” money saving strategies. If your group can come to an agreement, maybe place small fines (50cents to $5) on roommates who forget to turn off lights or computers after a certain amount of time. You can keep these fines in a jar for a roommate party at the end of the month or use it for the energy bill before splitting the costs.

If money’s still an issue for you, maybe compromise and do a roommates laundry one week in exchange for them paying your portion of the cable or do laundry for all your roommates in exchange for them taking care of your electric. Compromise means you too. : )

It’s much easier to shell out a little money than it is to repair relationships from too much bickering and nit picking. My advice is to enjoy the luxuries you’re paying for and continue to encourage your roommates gently to save costs. A prime moment is when someone is bitching about being broke.

Agreed that sometimes you just have to suck it up. And this kind of arguing never leads anywhere good. My housemate argues that he shouldn’t have to do the dishes, because when *he* cooks, he makes fewer dishes. It’s the same kind of thinking.

However, if your roommates’ habits are starting to push you out of being able to afford living where you are, then it starts to be a real problem. (I knew someone who ran into this.)

See if you can replace lightbulbs with compact florescents to save electricity costs. Additionally, if anyone looks at replacing a window AC unit, look at getting ones that are energy efficient & have timers. My housemate can set his AC to come on a half hour before he comes home. He gets to come home to a cool room without wasting energy ALL day.

If you want things to change, you’ll have to frame things in such a way that it’s beneficial to everyone else. The internet connection & cable sound like something your housemates enjoy, but, wasting electricity is throwing money away that could be used on other things.

Lastly, the house OWNER should be the final authority on matters, when all is said & done.

I realize that every bit helps, but in regards to your cable bill, you’re talking about a difference of eight dollars per month. Eight. Is fighting over eight dollars worth the loss of harmony among roommates? In my experience, the stress created by bad living situations is worth quite a bit more than that.

I agree with the other commentators as well–the money saved in rent more than covers this.

I have found that roommate living does encourage movement towards the least common denominator in frugality, cleanliness, sloth, and so on (not sure why that is). For me, that meant choosing roommates carefully, though that’s not always an option, I understand.

Eleanor sounds like a nightmare roommate. Whoa. Why put a few dollars over relationships ? That is way out of whack. And, as others have mentioned, she is getting the benefit of saving money overall anyway.

Balance is good. I hope she finds it, or she is going to have a lot of cats someday.

1. Jordan (from #6): Your furnace guy is wrong. It has been proven. I don’t feel like digging up the links right now. An OK compromise if you don’t like it being really cold or really hot when you get home would be a programmable thermostat, set it to keep things at 10-15 degrees closer to ambient (warmer in summer, cooler in winter) than you typically like it, but make it kick back to a normal setting ~ half an hour before you get home, then it should be at or close to the right temperature when you walk in the door.

2. To Eleanor, who posed the question: Seriously. Suck it up. You are already getting the benefits of decreased “buy-in” cost across the board. Even if you split a cable/internet bill TWO ways you usually save money (even with more features) than the basic packages, and you’re splitting it FIVE!! Same with power, though not quite as good of a deal as splitting cable.

The only thing worth it to bring up to roommates are things such as when they eat your food (if you do not share groceries) and don’t pay you back or replenish the supply, or if you DO split groceries, they aren’t contributing their part. Pretty much every other bill is already a great deal for you.

I think we have differences in our home. I have two roommates. I’m by far and away the frugal one. Another is middle of the road, and the third struggles paycheck to paycheck.

However, I think that’s mainly a function of our differing incomes (mostly). The struggling roommate I talked to last night. He had applied for a job and but didn’t think it would have enough money. After figuring out his net after taxes, I walked him through the budgeting process I learned (Essentials, then Wants). After paying for his essentials (Rent/Utils, Car Payment, Food) and his savings (he wants to start saving, so he’s having an amount automatically deducted), and on his more important wants, he still had about 200 dollars left over per month for what JD calls “blow money”

After that exercise, he was floored with how easy it was. He asked, “I was making just a little less than before and couldn’t save anything. How did you do that?” I told him he just needed to keep track of his spending, that he wasn’t thinking about consumption, he was just doing it unawares.

I with the other on sucking it up. When you live roommates as long as you agree to system in the beginning then that’s how goes. In this case the majority has spoken, and eleanor’s side lost.

I also think this issue splits along gender lines. Most guys haven’t had these financial nitpicking fights while women I know on the other hand have. Guys fight about other stuff like getting the good space on the couch. Everyone fights about cleaning.

I wouldn’t sweat it. The difference in cable packages costs Eleanor only $12 a month. As others have said, this is just one of the compromises you make when you live with other people. You may have some success encouraging your housemates to do things from an environmental perspective as well as a fiscal one (turning out lights, turning taps off when doing one’s teeth, etc) but don’t go to extremes here. If you can divide stuff by usage (eg. itemised telephone bills) then do so, but you’re entering a world of pain if you try and do so with one-lump-sum bills.

You’re better off looking at changes you can make to your own life – can you cook more rather than using ready meals? Can you buy less clothes/go to the cinema less/ride a bike instead of driving or taking public transport? Can you make a packed lunch rather than buying it each day? Can you reduce your eBay and Amazon habit?

Try tracking your spending using Quicken, Wesabe, GNUCash, or a similar tool. I find – and most of the people I know find – that living expenses like rent and bills are a small proportion of their expenses overall. They’re essential items rather than luxuries as well as being only about a third of your outgoings; there’s more fat to trim from the other expenses.

Elanor, you have my sympathies, even if you don’t have the sympathies of some of the commenters above. It’s just impossibly frustrating for me to walk home from my office in the 95-degree heat (because I wanted to save money on gas) only to find out that one of my housemates has had the air conditioner set at 72 degrees all afternoon.

As I see it, my housemates get the benefits of my sacrifices (turning off lights, televisions, and radios, turning down the A/C and heat when I’m the only one home, etc.) but don’t give anything in return. You’re darned right that this is unfair. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can talk to housemates and try to reason with them about how much money they could be saving, but don’t get your hopes up to high. As we’ve read about a lot recently, some people just don’t want to learn.

PS – The thing where people claim that turning off your heat or A/C during the day won’t save you any money is an urban legend. This myth survives because people like to repeat counterintuitive ideas, but it’s simply not true [1][2][3][4].

A couple ways you could cut electical costs, provided you have buy-in:

You could:

– change all your lightbulbs to CFLs. These use significantly less
power compared to incandescent bulbs.

– put motion sensors on all your light switches so the lights go out
automatically after some amount of time with no one in the room.
(though, this is rather expensive in and of itself).

– replace all A/C units (assuming it’s not central A/C) with ceiling
fans (also expensive, but in the long run, much cheaper and more
environmentally friendly)

You could also say you’re only going to pay for a certain amount of
bandwidth, then ofter to install a traffic-shaping router between the
cable modem and your internal network. But really, unless you’re
really up on your networking and computer knowledge, this isn’t a
simple solution, and actually ends up being one more device which is
always on and sucking up electricity.

Really, I think your being a little over the top about how much money
your “wasting”. $100 divded 5 ways is $20. I’ll *gladly* pay $20 a
month for digital cable! If the option is $60/month for just you,
plus all the increased costs of living by yourself, you’ve got it
pretty good right now! Especially, as someone else pointed out,
you’re getting upset at a difference of $8.00/month.

However, you *could* use this opportunity to begin pointing out the
environmental impact of your house-mates desires. Especially if
they’re prone/sensitive to the “green argument”. Start educating
yourself on things like the environmental impact of using incandescent
vs. CFLs and mention these things you roommates in passing. Don’t be
snarky about it. For example, when everyone is hanging out together,
or even just you and one other roommate, say things like, “Hey, I read
somewhere on the Web the other day that CFLs can cut your electricity
bills significantly! We ought to try that!”. Don’t complain, educate
and motivate :)

Yeah, living with roommates is the acme of frugality. After a few bad experiences it seems worth it to shell out the extra 500-1000$ per month just to be free from roommates. My advice is to spend 100-200$ a month and do extra chores in exchange for good relations with your roomies, buy them sodas and have in a maid if you have to. If it stretches out the time you can stand having roomies by a couple of years it will be worth thousand$.

If she’s that nitpicky about managing her own finances, she should be on her own anyway. While that wouldn’t save nearly as much money, a person with this kind of drive should focus on earning more, and managing it wisely on her own.

I actually wrote about something tangentially related to this yesterday on my blog. There is a site similar to iOWEYOU called BillMonk which my girlfriend and I use to track our bills it appears to be a little bit more flexible/tweakable than iOWEYOU. You can find it at http://www.billmonk.com

I’m sorry to say this but you just need to move out. Why live with people that don’t agree with your way of living? I know it’s hard to get 4 different roommates to agree but you should at least try to live with people that you can talk to and agree on ways of living.

I’ve lived with many roommates in the last 5 years and what I’ve found is that you are fighting a never ending battle. I’ve lived with people that constantly complained about the high electric bill but then left their computers, lights, tv’s on all night long. They wouldn’t turn the lights or tv off when they left the house and when they were there they would have all of the lights on. I could go on and on…

I’ve had an odd phenomenon happen to me with my last few roommates, they all had severe problems with spending money coupled with making much more money than me. They all took to buying me things. At first I hated it because I’m stubborn and don’t like taking things from people. Until I realized that saying no didn’t work. Just a few nights ago I basically fought with my roommate over not going to the bar because I didn’t have any money. After a while of going back and forth and him offering to pay I went and he paid for all of my drinks.

Good way to save money or taking advantage of somebodies problem? I’m not sure but I always try to continuously help them with their money, they just don’t want it.

You can even ignore the relationships part and treat it purely financially, and still see that you come out ahead.

Package 1 includes roommates, rent, fast internet, cable, and higher electricity bills. The cost of package 1 is the sum of rent, fast internet, cable, and electricity bills divided by the number of roommates.

Package 2 includes rent, slow internet, no cable, and lower electricity bills, but no roommates. The cost of package 2 is the sum of rent, internet, and electricity bills.

Unless those electricity bills are *very* high and the rent very low, then you’d be hard-pressed to arrange package 2 to cost less than package 1.

Paying a little bit more for utilities you aren’t using is a transaction cost necessary for the (substantial) savings on rent you get from roommates.

I sympathize with Eleanor. A few years ago I lived in a house with three other girls, two of which were, shall we say, not very green or aware of electricity usage. They were also Southerners living in a colder climate. They wanted the house to be 78 degrees in the winter and 70 degrees in the summer. This made no sense to me (and still doesn’t five years later). Some days in the winter I would come home to find the thermostat at 80! After many disagreements, I came to the conclusion that I should move. Yes, it cost me more to live alone, but you can’t put a price tag on your own sanity.

Way back, my roommate got cable. I didn’t really want this for myself. I considered it a waste of time or money. But since there is a consensus that the group wanted it, I chipped in. (But also kept the key to access pay-per-order movies & porn. That would have been an argument waiting to happen as to who ordered it.

It sounds like from your description, you still came out ahead. Saved $200 for rent, spent an extra $20 on cable & a few extra dollars on utilities. Net sum win for you.

There is a cost for being part of a community. If the costs of being part of the community are more than it’s worth to belong, you can just go your own way.

I don’t think you can fight it if there’s a consensus among the other roommates. You are already being frugal by living with roommates rather than living alone. The downside is that you have to compromise on some things. I only see three options:
1) live with it,
2) find new roommates who are interested in cutting costs (and agree certain things from the get-go),
3) live alone (obviously more expensive).

I think this is just plain complaining. You PICKED to live there with those roommates. Suck it up and pay for what the majority wants. If you don’t want to pay for those things, then find a new house w/ different roommates who think the same as you.

I run a house that is pretty frugal about bills, but we’ve had a few nit-pickers which just create nothing but trouble. I now have a specific line in the lease that states every roommate splits every bill evenly because the debate about pro-rating use is just plain ridiculous.

You live in the house, you split the bills. It’s simple. If you don’t want to deal with roommates live alone.

Maybe I’m in no mood to read this right now, but this guy sounds like a giant whiner.

I had a roommate once who was absolutely horrible, for many reasons, but one of the fights we got into was because one time it was freezing in March in Boulder, CO and I wanted to turn up the thermostat to something reasonable (like 68-70 degrees) but he wanted to turn it completely off. I asked if we could compromise, and he said, “We’ll compromise at zero”. What an ass.

When I told him that was BS, he told me to go put on a sweater. Did he want me to put gloves on too so I could use my computer?

Another time, I made Macaroni and Cheese (a culinary feat!) and when I came home for lunch to eat it, it was missing, because he ate it. I asked him about it, and he said, “We all share the food bill”. Note to self, don’t buy shared groceries with frugal, passive-aggressive jerks.

The absolute worst part is that the reason he had no money was mainly:
a) Chose to go to an out-of-state school (I was in-state)
b) Spent hundreds of dollars on snowboards and Snowboard Club membership fees
c) Quit his job halfway through the school year and didn’t bother getting a new one

Point being, if you try to save money by making your roommates miserable, instead of adjusting your own lifestyle choices, then four years later an ex-roommate will write a long and detailed blog comment about how awful you were.

I think Eleanor has all the info she needs to make a decision or to feel better about the situation! Hopefully, she will write back and tell us that she decided to look at the positive side of the situation… that she will never ever save more living alone than she is living with 4 roommates right now! How great is that?! I lived with 3 roommates at one time – and when one moved out, I had only one. There were times when I felt like things were not fair, a dish was not washed here and there… and I would be mad about it. (Or at least not happy…) Looking back, I see that the benefits far outweighed the negatives. From saving money, to the companionship. That you have to put money into perspective. So, just to echo most of the comments. Forget about how much the bill could be lower, if everybody else lived like you – and focus on how much you are saving because everybody else is living with you. My $0.02 from my experience.

When I read this I got scared because I thought it was one of my roommates. I live in a house with six total people though. I guess these issues are very common in shared living situations. In our house we also have some people who want the super duper cable package and others (like me) who don’t even have a tv. We just divide the expenses by the people who use them. Three of the housemates wanted cable. They agreed on a package and they split the cost among themselves. Everyone in the house agreed on high speed internet. We all split it. In the past one roommate didn’t have a computer so she didn’t pay internet and it was split 5 ways.

As far as the electrical use goes, there is no good way to meter any one’s specific use. 2 of the roommates in my house don’t have air conditioners but we all pay the same share of the electric bill. I am fanatical about turning off unused lights and appliances when I walk by them and they are unused. One option for the electric bill is charging a fixed cost per appliance, say $5/mo for each computer, mini-fridge, and $10 for each ac. Then split the remainder evenly.

I’ve had these feelings occasionally and I usually remember that even though I am paying for others electric use, they are also paying for mine, and it is split 6 ways. That means I’m really only seeing an additional $5-10/mo on my bill. Contrast that with the money you are saving having roommates and it’s clear a large amount of money is still being saved. I just write it off as the cost of having roommates and know that it is still way cheaper than getting my own place.

I sympathise with you. I’ve had roommate problems in both directions. My old roommate (who was a total bitch in general) would turn the heat off if she left the house, but I was still there!! Half an hour later I would be freezing, and go to the thermostat to find the heat off in the dead of winter.

But one current roommate leaves his fan on high pointing at his chair all day while he’s gone, and both of them leave the lights on sometimes. Also, sometimes things that don’t affect me at all can still annoy me- like his habit of driving his huge SUV across town to get expensive, high-calorie takeout from Outback Steakhouse, which is also packaged in a huge amount of disposable containers (unenvironmental x3.)

I think it matters GREATLY who has precedent in the apartment. If you all moved in at the same time, everything should be worked out beforehand. But when Mr. Outback Steakhouse moved into our house (which had no TV,) the $70/month cable was payed for solely by him, because we obviously wouldn’t have gotten it without him.

All I had to say was the last time I had roommates, it turned into a miserable experience because two of them had to turn it into an experience in precision hair-splitting.

It was so bad that I came home mid-way through the lease to find that they’d marked off sections (using lipstick!) of the refridgerator for each of the four of us with initials as to who could put what where. That was the day I vowed I’d never have a roommate again after the lease was up unless I was related to them by blood or marriage.

And *I* was the primary lessee in this situation.

My advice — get over it. Move out if you can’t stand to just split the bills evenly without haggling over it.

I sympathize with Eleanor. I’ve had roommates and now live alone because I moved away. Overall the specific roommates I had were a good fit for me, but I was SO READY to live alone when I moved.

You’ve got a few options:
1. suck it up – it really isn’t that much money and is likely outweighed by the savings
2. look for different roommates whose values align better with yours
3. get your own place

Even just lightly pursuing options 2 or 3 may help you get clarity on option 1: maybe you’ll find places are far more or less expensive than you thin, or that there are only freaks looking for roommates, OR you may find the new perfect living situation.

My point is, I think you’re focusing on something obvious (cable/electric costs) when maybe what is really bothering you is a bit bigger.

Living alone rocks when you’re ready for it – and then you can have NO cable if you want. ;)

This is a great topic. I agree with many of the comments that shared living can be tough. Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Big picture–if you’re able to complain about paying a bit extra for cable, that’s actually a good sign since it means you’re not worried about bigger roommate issues like paying rent on time, cleaning up, and keeping the noise down. No living situation is perfect so first tackle the big issues.

2. Clear communication–before moving in or soon after, it is important to state what normal shared expenses will be. When we found a new roommate a few months ago, we tried to be clear about the monthly costs for grocery, energy, and cable. As new things come up, it is good to discuss the sides and think of alternatives. And despite all of that, yes, some times you will be outnumbered on a decision–that is part of a shared living situation.

3. Personal bias–No one has really brought this up but it’s very important. We find faults in others quicker than in ourselves. You may dislike that your roommates are bringing up the costs up, but you are probably doing stuff that they put up with. Are you perfect about cleaning up after yourself? Do you bring obnoxious house guests over? Or, if you are not around much, are your roomates wishing they could put some one more social in your place? The list is endless–know that you are not the perfect roommate. Any time I found myself annoyed a roommmate did some thing, I did not get angry since I realized that I was probably also annoying them in some way that they were putting up with. This does not excuse really bad behavior–that you have to talk to them about–it is asking for a greater tolerance of small things.

Guys fighting for the best seat on the couch is one of the great struggles of mankind!

Back in the day when we still had land-line phones, we had ONE great chair and a bunch of broken down furniture. So, it was important to get and remain in the best chair. Then the phone would ring, and it was ALWAYS for the guy in the best chair. ALWAYS. At that point, you had to judge the veracity of the person who answered the phone. Was he lying to steal the CHAIR or was it an actual call? And nobody would take a message! “There’s no pen!”

It was nearly 20 years ago, but I had nearly the same situation. The biggest battle we had was over utilities. My girlfriend and I lived in the front of the house, the other two roommates in the back. We always set the thermostat to 68 degrees but the others liked to go around in short sleeves during the dead of winter. I got to the point of sabotaging the thermostat and other now-ridiculous-seeming strategies. Older and wiser now, my advice is honest and direct communication and be ready to act on it. Tell them that you are willing to pay what you think is a fair amount but no more.

If I had to guess, I’d say you’re rooming with the wrong people. Go on Craigslist or otherwise seek out like-minded money and energy conscious roommates. They’re out there.

Suck it up Be-Arch. You can always move. It is amazing that she complains about the little stuff, but having your own place you would be footing the entire bill for Internet, phone, electricity, gas even if you didn’t want cable. For starters you are complaining about maybe total extra 20-25 dollars amonth, while on the other hand you are saving 200 per month. And if you had to pay for all the utils yourself you would be in the hole the 200 + at least another 100 it would be costing you. So by my calculations you should just shut the Visnu up. Cut back elsewhere to pay for the $20 of get out on your own. Jeezzze!

You’re worried about an extra $8 a month on the cable/internet bill? ((100-60)/5)

Get real. When you live on your own, you will quickly realize that the amount for the ‘Customer Charge’ alone on your gas, electricity, phone etc bills will be much more than $8 each. Currently you are only paying 20% of those charges as well.

I have lived with three other roommates for quite a while (when I was single) and we all had our differences and whims and fancies. There were arguments over bill splitting and stuff, but nothing that could not be solved by a few minutes of peaceful thinking and some calm discussion.

You should realize that you guys have an opportunity to forge a lifetime friendships here, don’t blow it away over a few dollars.

If the differences are causing too much pain and suffering, then probably it’s time to move on and find a different set of people. However, you should still keep in mind that no two people will have the same lifestyle and, in all probability, you might end up with some guys who have similar habits; so it helps to prepare yourself for it.

You are saving $200/mo for an investment of…. The added cost to living with roommates due to cable is $8. You are paying more money for cable alone but NOT overall living expenses.

I suspect the real problem is that they aren’t doing things that you feel are important to do, which is to sacrifice everything you can think of to save money.

Look at the big picture. You probably made the right choice financially. Your roommates are helping you save $200 rent, even though you are not happy helping out their rent and the extra $15-$25 in cable and electricity that you are choosing to do without (your savings from keeping your lights off are split 5 ways, darn).

Maybe get some of them to start cooking a big community meal for the house to save on food costs for everybody. That way they can put labor into it and help that way. Better quality food too!

“But perhaps I’m being too nitpicky – as annoying as these extra expenses are, I doubt they make it worth moving to an apartment.”

That depends on what “worth it” means to you. I pay much, much more to live alone than I would were I to live with housemates, but to me it’s worth it. Financially, it may not make the best sense, but I am free to make my own decisions when it comes to what I do and do not want to pay for. If you are truly this concerned about not being able to pay for exactly what you want and nothing more, I would suggest that you take some time to think through the pros and cons of moving vs. staying put. You didn’t mention anything about your overall financial picture, so it’s hard to say whether this is something that you could make work or not.

Another thought is that you could try to spend less each month not by focusing on what is essentially out of your control (shared energy costs, e.g.), but by looking more closely at how you’re using your money outside of the housemate situation. I’m sure you’ve already done this, given your concern about reducing expenses, but maybe have another look at what you’re spending money on day to day (coffee? books? food?).

You remind me a little bit of myself when I was in college – always focused on how other people’s actions were affecting me, but not thinking as much about how I was affecting them. Money is important, but ultimately it’s only a tool. Focus on your happiness, on your relationships with other people, and don’t spend so much energy worrying about things that are beyond your control.

If utility bill usage is your biggest concern, don’t sweat the small stuff. It sounds like you’re losing, at most, $15 a month. If you were to get new roommmates, you might run into problems that would cause you some much stress that you’d pay 50 cents a day just to end it.

When I was in college, $15 or $50 a month would have driven me crazy. But roommates proved to drive me crazier. So this is advice in retrospect.

The furnace & A/C running issue is something I hear a lot. I’ve spoken to two experts on the issue, both engineers who have worked for major HVAC companies (Honeywell and Trane).

Both said the same thing, and I’ll share it with you here:

For a furnace, the more you run it, the more energy you use. Period. Keeping a given constant temperature uses the most energy. I keep my house at 45F during the day (while I’m gone) in the Minnesota winters, and heat to 68F in the evenings before I arrive home. Changing to that from keeping the temp at a constant 65F saved me significant cost. The engineers I spoke with verified that is the expected result.

The best way to save money on heat, though, is simply to use less — keep the temp lower and wear a sweater, and make sure your insulation is good (watch for leaks around doors and windows – a little caulk goes a long way).

A/C is a little different — the startup of the compressor is a huge penalty, and A/C both cools and removes humidity, so *both* are a factor in energy usage. When A/C has to work to cool and dehumidify a room for the first time, it uses a lot of energy. Maintaining that situation takes a lot less energy.

If you turn off your A/C, and your house gets hot and humid, you’re going through the worst-case usage pattern every single day. Not only will this cost you more in energy, but you’ll wear out your A/C quite a bit faster (which is really the higher cost).

That said, allowing your A/C to be on a lower setting when you’re not around, where it will keep the house dry but not quite as cool, *is* a good way to save energy. But only if you’ll be gone for a few hours.

Another great way to overcome this problem is to move into an apartment with roommates that has utilities included. I’ve always been the “energy nazi” turning off lights, and other energy using items that didn’t need to be on.

Now that I’ve moved into an apartment with utilities included the “stress” level of constantly maintaining a minimum of energy usage is gone as well as any arguments about utility bills.

I have the same problem. I have not found a way to fix it. But I learned that when I was walking around turning things off after my roommates used them, it was stressing me out trying to keep up with them. My advice is if you cannot find a good solution, join them in their expenses. Don’t leave your lights on or computer running on purpose, but stuff like the A/C. You should not suffer when you are not actually saving money. You are paying for A/C, so use it.

Boy have I been bitten by this on many occasions. Basically, you have to add it all up. Especially in a city, you will save $300-400 by living with roommates over living alone. She is not “losing” nearly that much money in the long run by thriftless roommate spending.

Areas I have found are easy:
1. Roommates should be ok with splitting cable separately, but the first time you sit in front of the TV you need to split it too.
2. Roommates may be ok with splitting the cost of CFLs. Since 5 roommates has a lot of coming and going, and lights are on a lot, this has saved us a ton of money. If you pay water bills, use the “jug in the toilet” trick to conserve water, and take shorter showers yourself.
3. Make a policy that nobody eats each other’s food unless it’s in a “free for all” area. This is what has cost me the most.

Other than that, you really need to just suck it up and await the day when you can find a frugal partner. If you find a person who shares your values, you may look for a comparable place to move to down the road that would be no more expensive. However, the pennies you’re losing due to roommates are more than covered by the savings you have by living with more people. Being the “spendthrift jerk” of the house is not a mantle anyone wants, so be cool and realize you’re not really losing money in the long run.

I sympathize with you. I have the same problem at home, but I only have one roommate. She always leaves her light and fan on in the house when she leaves. Then, she suggested we buy CFL and change every bulb in the house because she complained that the electricity bill is too high. ?! I have decided I will just turn off the light and fan in the living room when no one is there. I do not go in her room to turn things off when she is not around, because I do not want to make war. It is a hard issue.

Both of my male roommates are slobs and ignorant of energy conservation. I have to constantly turn the lights off in the hallway that are left on during the day. And my roommate likes to plug in all the appliances in the kitchen and when I unplug or remove some from the outlet, he plugs them right back in. It’s a no win situation. Just do the best you can and hopefully you can find roommates who are more in line with your frugal philosophy.

About the electricity usage, it does make a difference over time. At 11 cents a kilowatt-hour, a watt-year (a single watt running a whole year) costs about a dollar. So leaving on a 120 watt gaming computer 24/7 costs $120 a year or $10 a month.

That doesn’t mean you should necessarily bother fighting over it though. There are probably other things you use more of, such as taking longer showers or something.

However, it may be a good idea to sign up for a site such as http://billmonk.com/ or http://slackerfactor.com/ , where you can share bills and it automatically does all the calculations. It makes it easier to pro-rate things such as cable, if that deal can be worked out.

Also, some people commented they thought they saved energy by not turning off the heater or AC, so it didn’t have to “work harder” to catch up when you returned to the house. That is wrong. If you learn to read your meter and try the experiment, taking careful measurements of how much energy it takes to get your house to the target temperature using the different strategies, you can see this for yourself.

@Robr:
I don’t think the “leave the AC on” trick is wrong, but may not be the best in all locations.

For where I’m located during the summer, our desired inside temperature is 78 degrees and it is 110 degrees outside. If we completely left the AC off all day, the materials inside would absorb a great amount of heat and take quite a long time for the AC to catch up at maximum output.

If it’s 85 degrees outside, then it isn’t worth it to leave the AC on.

Lighten up? Suck it up? You’re asking her to put up with it? Why? So she can continue wasting her money paying for her roommates’ gluttonous use of utilities? Eleanor, 4 months ago my girlfriend and I moved into a house with another couple who we’ve been friends with for a long time now. BIG MISTAKE!

While my girlfriend and I are VERY wise with electricity – CFL bulbs, computers off at night, only lights when you need them, hot water heater and major appliances off during peak hours, no unneeded luxuries – our new housemates are HORRIBLE – he falls asleep on the couch all night with the TV on, she MUST have hot water all ALL times of day, MUST have 1,000,000 digital channels, MUST have the T3 bandwidth, must have all three of her computers running 24/7.

Our electricity bill is OUTRAGEOUSLY HIGH and all of these little “luxuries” are an additional pain. My girlfriend and I politely tried to discuss getting rid of the luxuries and do you know what they did? They refused to listen and yelled at us and said “You should have expected it to cost this much.” WHAT? Why pay for luxuries when we are struggling to make rent each month! (A cheap 2-bed house in Hawaii goes for $1600 a month, apartments are worse.)

My girlfriend and I are moving out in a couple of weeks. If our “friends” can pay those bills, then fine, we won’t pay for their luxuries any longer. Neither should you.

I can say that I’m the frugal one in my roommate relationship. I try to keep the thermostat on 70 in the winter and on 78 in the summer. My roommates would rather switch the temperatures.

I can understand where you’re coming from, since I can visibly see a spike anytime they are in charge of the thermostat, and it’s frustrating. I was gone for an entire month due to Christmas break, and the energy amount rose by almost 600 kw. And I wasn’t even THERE to bask in the warmth. I still paid a third however, just in case they decided to leave for a prolonged period of time, then they would do the same for me.

I am rooming with my long-time college roommate, and her boyfriend (whom I dislike). He was an addition after the lease was already signed. He does pay for a third of the utilities and rent, however, so I guess I can’t complain too much about that.

They love to wash the dishwasher every day, which I can’t complain too much about, ’cause my dishes need to be cleaned too. They also love to do at least a load of laundry a day. How they could possibly wear 5 loads of clothes within a week, I’ll never understand.

The boyfriend got a huge screen tv, which I can only imagine uses a lot of energy. Not to mention they like to leave it turned on even if they leave the room or the apartment for lengthy amounts of time (an hour or more).

I was happy to have basic cable and the cheapest internet, but they wanted the highest internet and a big cable grouping, not to mention DVR, which I do not use.

I guess I just needed to vent for a while, since I can’t really say anything to them.

And I do get a cheaper deal by having roommates, I understand that. It’s just frustrating that we could ALL have an even CHEAPER deal by just putting some stops on luxuries you can get by without.

I agree with the original publisher. Some of us want to live energy conscious lives which end up costing us less in the long run. I had a roommate that didn’t pay his common bills (utilities, cable) yet left MY huge TV and playstation on all the time. It’s not about being miserly, it’s about basic respect that one’s negligence is costing others money. I currently live on my own and the increased expense is completely worth it. It’s about sanity and respect, my former roommate has to pay his own bills now. Knowing that my actions result in lower bills is great, knowing that I’m no longer paying for an energy-sucking deadbeat makes me feel better about my situation. Live on your own, it’s the best way to avoid the nonsense of an inconsiderate roommate.

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My name is J.D. Roth. I started Get Rich Slowly in 2006 to document my personal journey as I dug out of debt. Then I shared while I learned to save and invest. Twelve years later, I've managed to reach early retirement! I'm here to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you get rich slowly. Read more.

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